Abstract
A theory of learning for the future advocates the teaching of a preparedness to
respond in a creative way to difference and otherness. This includes an ability
to act imaginatively in situations of uncertainties. John Dewey’s pragmatism
holds the key to such a learning theory his view of the continuous meetings of
individuals and environments as experimental and playful.
That pragmatism has not yet been acknowledged as a relevant learning
theory for the future may be due to the immediate connotation and the
many interpretations associated with the term ‘experience’, which is at the
heart of Dewey’s educational thinking. Dewey defi ned experience in a way
that is not well understood within educational research, and in a way that is
easily confused with the term ‘experiential learning’. The latter refers to the
importance of participants’ ‘experiences’ derived from bodily actions and stored
in memory as more or less tacit knowledge.